Oh yeah, uh, hi I'm Verice!
by TheCrackedCrystal
Summary: Yami Bakura achieves a goal, and there is a new duelist girl.


Note: I do not own Yu-Gi-Oh or any of it's characters or ideas. The only thing I own here is Verice.  
  
Scene I: In a park near Domino High  
(That is where the characters go to school, if you didn't know.)  
  
Yami Bakura was sitting under a tree. The air around him was tinted blue, and seemed to scorn the shadows of the branches, glowing softly. Over his heart, there was a sharper golden light, which outlined the Millennium Ring. A small trail of sweat ran down each temple, as he gazed down at the Ring. His pupils dilated and contracted slowly. A moan escaped his lips, then snarling growl, in a much crueler voice.  
This was, of course, another battle between Yami Bakura and his hosting human. His mind was as far off as it is possible to be when focused on a piece of gold five inches from your face. Consciousness was divided between the Shadow Realm, (from which interference might come), the real world, (in case of physical distractions), and the facets of the Millennium Ring's power. Bakura was trying to rebel against him, and regain control. The plot to create trust between Marek and Yugi's friends, while injuring Bakura's real self, had made Bakura furious. That wasn't normal for him. He now fought with an intense and insistent vent of his fury at being manipulated. Yami Bakura decided that it was time for a new addition to his fighting force. Instead of trying to gain control over Bakura's temporary state, he decided to neutralize him, and use his life force to improve himself. This was rather risky, and he had never wanted to try it before, but with Bakura actually posing a threat, he wanted to be sure of his position.  
Several minutes later, his hand came up to rub away the sweat. He gathered up his coat, and got to his feet gracefully. Muttering under his breath, he plotted his next course of action. The glowing had abated, and the golden light had reduced to a glimmer around the ring part of the Ring. The dangling pendants somehow refused to hit each other as he stood. Indeed, the Ring seemed to ignore the light breeze caused by Yami Bakura's movements as his body had rejected the shadows during the earlier battle.  
The tall and sinister figure held his hands to either side of the Ring and muttered "Show me the Pharaoh!". The glimmer grew slightly, and the ring tugged at the cord tied around Bakura's neck. The pendants strained the hardest, as if pulled to Bakura's left side, and when he turned, they temporarily tugged him forward, then fell flat.  
All but one. The pendant in the center had the faintest blue sheen over it. It was barely noticeable. But it obviously held no such power of foretelling as the rest did.  
The central pendant's standstill aught to have worried the Yami. It should have worried him a lot. The only thing that could cause such an occurrence was a draining of the Millennium power in that ring. But this he knew. That was the risk in the fight with the real Bakura. The Yami had weakened Bakura by attacking him with that power, and then using the vacated pendant to imprison him, as he had once been trapped.  
  
Scene II : A crash course in Duel Monsters, at the other end of the same  
park  
  
I am getting so sick of watching Yugi and Joey fight. Standing with Tea and Serenity cheering isn't much better. Even Serenity's comforting serenity won't keep me form loosing it. Even Tea had that one duel with Mai! Me? All I do is grab Joey when Kaiba or Keith start calling us names.  
By now you can guess who is thinking this. Tristan was getting fed up with the mixed roles of cheerleader, bodyguard, hero's sidekick, and Serenity's chaperone. There was one simple solution to this. He would have to join the Duel Monsters masters. Now if only he could remember what Dark Zebra's special ability was......  
Two duels later, (Both were moderate successes, and he won by a small margin, but he got a ton of advice from the instructor of the class.) He was pretty proud of theis, and it was less stressful to duel with total strangers who were as bad as he was. Tristan decided it was time for a break. There was a fast food restaurant a block away, and it was around 1:00. Lunchtime. Walking across the courtyard where the Duel Monsters class was held, he heard another member of the class saying that there would be unguided dueling at 1:30. He decided this classified as a chance to test out his winning streak, if three wins count as a streak.  
After purchasing a hamburger and soda at the restaurant, Tristan went back to the tables set up for the class. The students there were so bad at dueling, they had to draw the fields for cards in permanent marker on the tabletops, and label each rectangle! About ten minutes before class started, a somewhat short figure came through another pathway to the courtyard. Tristan was only barely able to keep from choking when the mysterious person sat down opposite of him.  
At first glance, it could have been Yugi after a trip to the hair stylist. With an eye to detail, one saw that, indeed, she had the same multi colored, spiked hair as his friend, and she was really short, but this was DEFINITELY not Yugi. She was dressed in mildly baggy black jeans and a dark gray T-shirt with a tie-dye swirly type design. She had purple eyes, like Yami, Yugi, and Marek's, sort of tan skin, and a hairdo to match Yugi. Except it was green where his was red. She wore no makeup, unlike Tea and Mai, and she was in sharpest contrast to them. "Tomboy" was the only word to describe her appearance.  
"Excuse me! I heard that there was a Duel Monsters club this afternoon, in this park. Was I mistaken? The marks on this table suggest my utterly severe mistake!"  
Tristan didn't respond right away, and she took this as offence at her question and quick assumption. Somewhat apologetically, shrugging her shoulders, she said "Oh yeah, I forgot. Hi. My name is Verice. I am a duelist looking for practice."  
Tristan thought he might be able to speak without choking on his last bite of hamburger in surprise at her sudden appearance, but he was wrong. He valiantly fought the urge to spit it up onto the table in front of them, and managed to say at the same time, "Uuuh, hi. I'm Tristan."  
This did not seem to be unduly interesting to her. "Uh huh. Thanks for sharing, Tristan. Now, about the dueling?"  
"Oh yeah, uh, there was an amateur class this morning, and there will be freestyle dueling this afternoon.", he said. There was some noise as the rest of the duelists were coming back from lunch, and setting up the tables for a mini tournament. It appeared that there were some good duelists mixed in with the lousy ones from his class.  
"Lovely! I guess we'll be competing then?", she asked.  
"Well... Yeah, catch ya later." Why was he having so much trouble talking to her? With Tea he would have cracked like ten jokes per sentence in a casual conversation, but Verice was totally dumfounding.  
  
Scene III: Same courtyard, but however long a tiny tournament is later  
  
Tristan was standing beside one of the tables. This one didn't have the marks for beginners, because they weren't totally awful duelists in this round. It was Verice and a kid Tristan didn't know, and they were the last two. Their skills were closely matched, and each had only about 500 Life Points left. It was going to be close. Some of the contestants had gone home after loosing. Tristan had stayed, and he was rooting for Verice. He turned around for a moment, when a guy standing behind him asked for the time, and when he got back into the duel, Verice's opponent had used Mirror Force on her attack, sacrificed all his monsters, and summoned a Red Eyes Black Dragon. Verice was defenseless, and lost the duel.  
Verice smiled, waved to the duelist, and turned away from the table. She was about to brush past Tristan when his traitorous mouth remarked:  
"Hey, Verice! Great duel. Could I look at your deck? There is a place down the street that has great milkshakes. I'll pay."  
Again, Verice smiled. She has a really nice smile, thought Tristan. "A good duelist tends not to show her opponents her deck, you know. Since the chances we will duel are about nil, I will make an exception. It sounds lovely."  
Does that count as flirting? He wondered as she started to the restaurant, Wait a sec, nil chance of dueling? That was almost an insult! "Well, I'm glad that you recognize a duelist totally out of your league. That is one notch up in my opinion!" he teased.  
"Eliminated in the top six, and you are out of my league? You'll have to explain that one. A notch up in your eyes? Where exactly am I then?" There was an expression of humor in her eye. They were now in the restaurant, and paused to order drinks, pay, and sit down.  
"I believe the address is 450 Park Street, but if you are talking longitude and latitude, I failed science class." That was more like it. He was regaining his wits. It would be interesting to see where this went. Serenity was beautiful, but this girl was different.  
"Ah, I thank you for your utmost wisdom. What classes do you not fail in? Perhaps you even exceed in something other than observation of duels!"  
Any other person might have struck a nerve there, but she softened this reprimand by taking a large slurp of milkshake. It would be very interesting to see where this went. 


End file.
